passed commuting the tithes into a rent-charge payable not by the occupiers but the landlords.  Some modern writers have argued that the change was merely a matter of form, as the landlords increased the rents in proportion; and it seems such a natural thing to have happened that earlier writers may well be excused for assuming that it actually occurred.  But there is no excuse for repeating the charge now; for in consequence of recent legislation it has been necessary for the Land Courts to investigate the history of rents from a period commencing before 1838; and the result of their examination has elicited the strange fact that in thousands of cases the rent remained exactly the same that it had been before the Tithe Commutation Act was passed.

But ere long economic causes were at work which tended to check the prosperity of Ireland.  It was soon found that the proportion which by the Act of Union Ireland was to contribute to the Imperial Government was too large for the country to bear.  The funded debt of Ireland which amounted to L28,000,000 in 1800 rose by 1817 to L130,000,000; in that year the whole liability was taken over by the Imperial Government.  Then the fall in prices which naturally resulted from the peace of 1815 pressed heavily on an agricultural community.  Improvements in machinery and the development of steam power squeezed out the handlooms of Ulster and the watermills of other parts of the country.  Wages were low; and the people who depended mainly on the potato were underfed and undernourished.  In 1846 and 1847 came the two terrible blows to Ireland—­first, the potato disease; and then the Repeal of the Corn Laws, which made the profitable growing of wheat with its accompanying industries, impossible.  During the fearful years of the potato famine, it is only too probable that some of the efforts for relief were unwisely conducted and that some persons sadly failed in their duties; no measures or men in the world are ever perfect; and the difficulties not only of obtaining food but of getting it to the starving people in days when there were few railways and no motors were enormous.  But when modern writers shower wholesale abuse over the landlords of the period, and even hint that they brought about the famine, it is well to turn to the writings of an ardent Home Ruler, who was himself an eye-witness, having lived as a boy through the famine time in one of the districts that suffered most—­Mr. A.M.  Sullivan.  He says:—­

“The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned.  I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping.  I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust.  On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall.  A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home—­cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people.